Hi there! I'm Jay Bell and I like making up stories! I'm the guy who wrote Inspiration – Something Like Summer
Written by Jay Bell on January 25, 2011 – 8:24 pm -
Thomas Edison once said “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” That ratio may work for an inventor, but I feel that artists are much more dependant on inspiration than that. Personally, I take inspiration from books I enjoyed while growing up, as well as relying heavily on the experiences of my past. I’ve also found that one art form will frequently fuel another.
Songs are a tremendous source of inspiration. Lyrics are a form of storytelling so compressed that they often leave much to the imagination. This, accompanied by the way music intensifies emotion, makes it easy to dream up a story while I listen. Some of my books have anthems, songs I listen to over and over again to get me in the right mood. On rare occasions I’ll even tweak scenes to better match the lyrics. Without a doubt, the anthem for Something Like Summer was a song called Faster Still by The Fold.
I had a small tracklist of various songs that correlated to scenes in Something Like Summer, and their rhythm beat like the heart of the story for me, bringing life to the relationship between Ben and Tim.
Sometimes even a simple photo can be inspiring. I was halfway through the first draft when I stumbled upon a photo of professional model Bruno Santos and felt like I had found a photo of Tim Wyman instead. Bruno has had a number of looks over the years, and only some of them truly remind me of Tim, but being able to flip through those when I needed to get closer to the character was a great help. The two photos featured here made me especially glad, since one could easily be Tim in his teen years, the other how he appears at the end of the book.
These are just a few examples out of many. To paraphrase the opening quote, I’d say art is 40% inspiration, 30% imagination, 18% desperation, and 12% delusion. Hmmm. Maybe we better leave the famous quotes to Edison.
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Posted in Books, Gay, Inspiration, Something Like Summer | 7 Comments »
I just finished sls in two days on my kindle. It was great and I hope to read of your future novels.
Thanks Ted! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Whizzed through Something Like Summer and enjoyed the emotional roller coaster I went on (growing up as the same age as Ben in Houston with a hot best friend who I shared some “unique” experiences with and now in a long term relationship with a pilot in the airline industry also contributed to some bizarre parallels) Needless to say I was a bit of a mess when I finished the book at the airport terminal (wish I would have saved the last quarter of it to read alone at home) – oh well!
Long story short- I can’t get the book out of my head and wished it had never ended. Can you share the rest of your play list or any other images that inspired the story. I’m not ready to move onto the next book.
Thanks!
Hi Daren!
Very interesting parallels indeed! I spent some of my high school years growing up outside of Houston, but I promise I wasn’t spying on you all that time.
Sorry you were reading the end in public. I’ve had a few people complain about that, so you aren’t alone.
As for more inspirations, I decided to put together another blog entry on that topic. You can find it on the main page. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading!
J
[...] expressing an interest in other songs and images that inspired Something Like Summer. I have a previous blog entry about some of those inspirations, but there are indeed more sources not listed there. Let’s start [...]
Finished the book in 1 1/2 days. Could not put it down. It brought back so many emotions that I felt back between High School and College. I also couldn’t get the book out of my head for days. Most of the comments I have read make Tim the bad guy. I think everyone comes out in thier own way some people just need a longer time to deal with friends and family. Jay it would be cool if you wrote a book that runs through the same period but from Tims point of view.
Craig! Somehow I missed your comment on here until now. Thanks for being on Tim’s side. He definitely deserves a little credit. And you’re right–some people need more time to come out, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Hopefully I’ll be able to do him justice in a sequel some day.